Have We Already Been To Mars?

I was emailed this video by my brother who lives in Canada. He told me that is shows (so he was told) a joint US/Russian expedition to mars in the late 1970’s. When I asked him where he got this video, I expected him to say some “friend of a friend of a friend nonsence”, etc. But he said a colleague of his downloaded it off some russian video site only 2 days ago. I have taken the liberty of creating a Youtube account and uploading this video so that I can get some input on this, as if this is proven to be real, there is going to be some serious questions to answer.

You goddamn better believe there will be questions to answer. My opinion? Yeah, 99% chance it’s a fake – if this were a real video from the 1970s, you’d think there would be SOME sort of film degradation. This practically looks HD. It’s also suffering from possible ‘too much shakey wavery focusy camera in AfterEffects’ in an attempt to make it look real.

But whether it’s real or not is not the point. Imagine that infinitesimally small chance that it is real? That we’ve been in orbit of Mars before, searching for ruins. It’s fun to think about. You’d think that if the US and Russia were going to take a flight to Mars, though, they’d at least take the time to go down to the surface for awhile – travel time one-way is 8-10 months. Seems like an awfully long trip for a couple grainy 480p videos.

Ty is an illustrator who stays up too late, and has to wear glasses. You can follow him on Twitter if you want to (@glitchritual), but he's just gonna throw your stupid PR crap in the garbage, so don't email him. SEE MORE ARTICLES BY "Ty Dunitz"

How did this film get back? It’s presented as a hand-cam within a capsule, so that implies that someone returned along with the film. Where did they get the fuel for the return trip? If they didn’t come back, who were they? Why didn’t they at least attempt a landing if they knew they wouldn’t return?

All the NASA footage that they’ve sent back from prior missions before digital transmission were film canisters. How would they send the hand-camera’s film back? An airlock?

I think facepuncher is right, I recognize the spaceship from photos of the ISS.

@Tim Sylvester – If they didn’t land, they don’t need fuel for the return journey. Just use Mars’ gravity to slingshot the spaceship back towards Earth. And since there is no friction in space, you don’t need fuel to keep up the speed.

Isn’t it a bit odd that the sand dunes haven’t shifted at all in over 30 years? And that even the shadows of the crater rim haven’t moved? Oh, but I’m sure there’s some perfectly good explanation involving government conspiracies (maybe the “recent” HiRiSE pics were actually taken in the 1970s and are only now being released?)

Plus, the whole shaky-camera thing is totally over-the-top. None of the Apollo video I’ve seen has been this poorly shot.

The shaky camera is a typical giveaway for most fake/viral videos. It is actually quite easy to distinguish the “I want this to be shaky so that it looks real” look from the “amateur does not know how to hold a camera” look. The first one is, like Haecceity pointed out, mostly over the top.

Plus, anyone who would go through the trouble to go to mars would probably know how to hold a camera. Hell, you could even just let it drift in space. ðŸ™‚

Graeme

This reminds me of the Dharma Initiative training videos on LOST that are so over-the-top shakey/grainy/poorly spliced that it loses its believability.

Joe

Did you know the word “gullible” is not in the merriam webster dictionary?